Five Tuesdays in Winter(21)

“Interesting choice,” Grant said, and they both cracked up.

It was true that Becca was going through an awkward stage. She had recently shot up, but only in the legs, so that, especially in shorts, her squat torso looked like it was supported by stilts. She had gotten her braces off in the spring, though now she wore some sort of thick retainer whose fake kitten-tongue pink made her real gums look gray and sickly.

“A diamond in the rough, perhaps,” Ed said, forcing a straight face. “Seriously, it shows good taste. She’s not hiding anything. She’s like a clear stream. That’s exactly what you want. I went for the other kind and it’s ruined my life.”

“Ruined your spring,” Grant said.

“Ruined my spring, summer, winter. What did I miss? Fall. God, I can’t even think about fall. Anyway, not quite as adorable as Celia Washburn maybe, a little Animal Kingdom.” Ed stretched his neck and pretended to rip leaves off a tree. Grant snorted and Ed’s voice quavered then righted itself as he finished: “But very sweet.”

On the way home we passed the park. There was a pickup game out on the basketball court. Ed made a bee-line for it. I cringed. When the ball went through the net, he stepped onto the court and talked to the tallest guy, pointing to me and Grant who had trailed behind.

“Get your asses over here,” he said. “It’s our ball.”

Basketball wasn’t my game. But after a frustrating set of tennis it felt good to hold a big ball in my hands. I had never played on this court. No one I knew had. It was for the public school kids. Between points, I looked around at my town: the gazebo, the swings and jungle gym, the baseball diamond, the stone library and its parking lot beyond. I’d never seen it from right here. I’d had my own swing set in the backyard, gone to the club for my summer sports. One kid on the court gave me a hard time, called me Richie Rich under his breath. But the others just played, slapped me on the back when I managed to do the right thing, were forgiving when I didn’t.

Ed got them all laughing because he really couldn’t do anything in this life without talking. He tried to derail the other team with his narration: “Okay, now Big Red’s got the ball. Big Red’s coming down. Does Big Red have boobs or pecs? We’re not sure but boy are they distracting. They draw your eye away from the ball.” He went on and on. Even as he was intercepting and fleeing in the other direction you could hear his voice trailing after him. Every now and then I’d remember we’d seen Becca and were going to call the community center when we got back and I’d get a fresh rush of energy.

Once we got her schedule, we arranged to run into her. Ed had an uncanny knack of being able to predict her movements so that each time, she appeared to be stumbling upon us and not vice versa. Ed did not let me hide in the aisles again. The first time was in the sub shop. We were already in line when she walked in. We had it all planned out. Grant, very naturally though completely scripted, asked me what time it was and I turned around to look at the clock on the back wall. I caught her spitting her retainer into her hand and shoving it into her shorts pocket.

She said hey and I said hey. Her hair was in a ponytail and she had on her light-blue camp T-shirt that was crusty with some kind of freshly dried paint or clay. She had the clearest eyes. I had no idea what the word was for the color they were. She asked me if I was having a good summer and I asked her the same. We told each other which books we’d chosen from the summer reading list. She promised me that The Brothers Karamazov got better sixty pages in. And then we placed our orders, which came quickly, wrapped up tight, and she left, saying she had to bring one back to the house for her brother.

“Only one sub for Fatty?” Ed said.

When she was gone he said, “She likes our boy.”

“What’s not to like?” Grant said.

The next time we saw her I was supposed to ask her out. But I chickened out. The time after that Ed did it for me.

“We’re going to the movies tonight. Want to come?”

“Um, yeah.”

“Um, yeah it is. We’ll pick you up at six forty-five sharp.”

“But you don’t know where I live.”

“You’re in the blue book, right?” I said, as if I didn’t know 67 Vine Road and the big beech tree out front and her mother’s Volkswagen Rabbit (LL3783) and her father’s Audi (KN9722) that sat in the garage they built last year.

“Oh, you’re in the blue blood book, right?” Ed mocked afterward, exactly in my accent, which had never seemed an accent to me before then.

At first, of course, I feared Becca would fall for Ed. “Une femme qui rit est une femme au lit,” he’d said once, and he was so much funnier than anyone I knew.

The third time she came out with us, we went miniature golfing and got through five holes before it started pouring and we went back to the house. Grant pulled out the big pot for popcorn and Ed went into the living room and flopped on the sofa. I said I needed to go upstairs and change my shirt, but I lingered on the stairs to see what she and Ed would do together alone.

“You’re kind of a ringer at the mini links,” he said. “You go there a lot?”

“My brother likes it.”

“But you not so much.”

“I just beat him so easily.”

Ed laughed and said, “Have a seat.” But Becca said she was going to go find me.